Once the price drops significantly enough where GE will offer NGrid a crazy deal like they currently do with the HPS cobras, I have do doubt that LEDs will start popping up but for now I'm convinced NGrid is too cheap to start using LEDs. Hopefully it holds off until i get my own place where i can stow lots and lots of lights away lol.

West Penn Power started buying GE street lights last fall.

These actually kind of caught me off guard since Markham was still installing HPS over the summer. The group of six in total replaced a Unidor 150 and five OV 15s, all 100w HPS.

ahh just six? I guess they're still testing them. Narragansett Electric had test sites for 100W HPS in the 70s (mostly bail latch M-250Rs and ITT 13s from what I've seen but one or two were M-250A2 FCOs in the early 80s with foil NEMA tags) but was using mostly HPS for 250/400W by the late 70s. low wattage HPS didn't even catch on until the wipeout in the early 90s, though a good handful of 100 and 175W MV lights were left alone, though NGrid onyl services the 100W fixtures from the group of the left-behinds.

Yeah, these are the only LED fixtures I know of in Markham. I guess if they were changing them out the whole street would be LED by now :/ .

Anyways my area was started using HPS pretty early on, the first HPS lumes used were OV 15s, Unidor 150/400s and Powerlites from the late 70s. Most are still up but some have since been replaced with newer HPS lumes. I'm not sure when the remaining MV B2217s and Unistyles here were retrofitted to HPS though.

Unfortunatly there were no retrofits made by NECo that I'm aware of. I'd love to get my hands on one of the couple of 100W HPS ITT 13s (and of course a 100W MV one too, though those are harder to find here than the sodium ones) It's be cool to score a 100W HPS bail latch M-250R as well since those are fairly uncommon yet more common than the ITT 13s ever were. Of course a MV one would be great too but I actually like the older OEM HPS fixtures. It's interesting to see how the HPE gear has actually "evolved" over the years into more simplistic and cheaper. I think GE's older ignitors were partly METAL versus that cheesy white plastic they use now. and or couse the lamps were much better quality.

Just in case you're interested, the lights on my half of the street go:
Pole 1- (no light)
Pole 2- 50W HPS Thomas & Betts 113 on a 6ft tapered elliptical
Pole 3- 50W HPS GE M-250R2 on a 6ft cantilever arm (brand new as of 10/12; before that was a 90s R2)
Pole 4- 50W HPS GE M-250R2 on a 6ft cantilever arm (looks like 1990-ish; has a foggy but not yellowed FP lens; the lens seems a tad shalower than a typical FP lens though...)
Pole 5- 100W HPS M-250R2 on a 6ft tapered elliptical (looks like a mid-to-late 90s unit)
Pole 6- 100W HPS M-250R2 on a 6ft tapered elliptical (looks like a 1989-ish model! Oddly enough though it as the last variation of GE's narrow NEMA tag font)
Pole 7- (no light)
Pole 8- 100W HPS M-250R2 on a 6ft tapered elliptical (the one in front of my house w/ a FP lens. The thing looks just like a mid 80s version but it was installed in 2008 with flawless [though not shiney] paint!)
Pole 9- (no light)
Pole 10- 50W HPS 1993 GE M-250R2 "flat bottom" on a 6ft tapered e arm (this one has some brownish water in the lens)
Pole 11- (no light)
Pole 12- 100W HPS M-250R2 on a 6ft tapered e arm (late 90s-mid 2000s model looking at the bumps for the slipfitter bolts)
Pole 12- (no light)

You can tell the age of a M-250R2 but looking at the NEMA tag (which can be misleading at times) or by looking at the bumps where the slipfitter go. The current R2 has huge bumps while the very first one i don't think had them at all. The very first one was flatish like the M-250R but still just 26.5" long. Then the next one came that was chubbier (like Tony's 100W R2). Then came the 1993 version (we all know that one lol). Then the next one came that was more of a comfy mix between the two early R2s with slight bumps for the fitter, which i don't believe changed much until the 2007-ish redesign where the paint became shinier. The newest one looks like the chubby 80s version but with large bumps near the slipfitter (probably to reduce the cost of the cast aluminum body, though the price just keeps going up...).

Just my 2 cents lol. I'm not positive it's 100% acurate, but It seems liek it's similar to that effect. the M-250A2 is much simpler. It went from boxy front and top (my favorite version) to boxy front and rounded top to rounded front and rounded top.

A lot of older lights here don't have NEMA tags but the older lights usually have external name plates so it's sometime possible to read them using a high power zoom. As a bonus since most lights here don't have date codes you can also find out the date of the light.

Anyways my street's lights are.

Pole 1: Cooper OVZ, replaced a Westinghouse OV 15 with a missing door in 2007, door blew off during a storm and I'm not sure where it went

Poles 2 - 10 ish Westinghouse OV 15, installed in the early 1980s ('81-'82) pictured one is the one across from my house.

Poles 11-15 Crouse Hinds OV 15, installed in 1985 this part of my street was built a few years later.

All are 100w HPS, and are on 30ft poles with 8' tapered e arms.

Oh and I have a old 250w HPS ballast (from my B2255) that was made in 1980 and had a metal cased ignitor too like the caps. My later 250w HPS ballast from my R47 was made in 1993 and had the newer plastic cased cap.

Ahh. That OV-15. I like that NEMA tag font...

Yeah the older ballast "kits" had a much more robust look to them. Today's OEM ballasts look like resale ballasts.

Found the model of this, it looks like it's the small version of this.

wow it sure doesn't look like it's 20 pounds!

Yoy guys want to know how my street is!

Pole 1- Leotek GC1-40c
pole 2- Nothing
Pole 3- Nothing
Pole 4- Leotek GC1-40c
pole 5- Leotek GC1-40c
Pole 6- Leotek GC1-40c
Pole 7- Nothing
Pole 8- Leotek GC1-40c
pole 9- Nothing
Pole 10- Leotek GC1-40c
and not to bore you with all the led streetlights.......
Pole 32- Leotek GC1-40c (light in front of my house)

Such variety on my Street.

LOL. I suppose most streets in the Northeast will eventually have some LEDs, though with the talk of an off-shore wind farm in the works fro RI, i don't see how a so called "upgrade" to LED is going to be neccesary. Apparently NGrid said they will be raising the rates (again) for the next "few" months in an effort to cover for damages from Sandy. They raised the rates with Irene too but did eventually lower them recently before raising them again. They say by spring of 2013 regular rates will be in effect. Let's see if they stick to their word...